Chester County woman with shoplifting problem gets special sentence

WEST CHESTER — A woman with a two-decade long history of shoplifting that was fueled by her ongoing mental illness was spared a term in state prison Monday under a plea agreement involving a new diversionary sentencing program.

Bonita Nimerfroh, 65, of Morgantown, and formerly of Chester Springs, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of retail theft in 2011 and 2012, her 16th and 17th convictions for the crime. According to court information, she was accused of stealing $52 in food from a Ludwig’s Corner market and $150 in items from Boscov’s Department Store in North Coventry.

She was sentenced to 86 days of incarceration at Chester County Prison, followed by 75 days of electronic home monitoring and two years’ probation, during which she will be required to submit to the Adult Probation Department’s mental health protocol, calling for constant treatment.

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Nimerfroh, a quiet woman who appeared in court dressed in a colorful striped sweater, wire-framed glasses and braided hair, will also be forbidden as part of her sentence to enter any retail store of any kind, anywhere, without supervision by a family member or other person.

“We are hoping that this is the last time she is before any court, your honor, attorney Thomas Ramsay of West Chester, who has represented Nimerfroh throughout her battle with kleptomania and criminal violations, told Chester County Common Pleas Senior Judge Ronald Nagle. “She is a grandmother, who missed Thanksgiving and Christmas because she was in jail. She doesn’t want to miss any more of those events.”

Because of her long record of retail theft convictions — the most recent coming in 2008 — Ramsay said she was facing a possible 18- to 36-month sentence in a state correctional institution. But the county has recently adopted an enhanced intermediate punishment program (IPP) that allows such defendants to escape such punishment in exchange for intensive supervision, if approved by the probation department and accepted by the sentencing judge, and she was granted admission into that program.

Currently, IPP defendants are mostly repeat drunk drivers, who face months behind bars but are able to trade some time on electronic monitoring for jail time. The new program will focus on those accused of other crimes, though not violent felonies, like the retail thefts that Nimerfroh committed.

Ramsay, who expressed gratitude to the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco, and the probation officer, Michelle Anastacio, for their handling of NImerfroh’s case, said in other counties she would simply have been sent to prison, eventually released with no follow-up program in place to address her underlying mental health issues.

Nimerfroh was denied entry into the county’s Mental Health Court because of her long record, but Ramsay said the expanded IPP sentence would allow her to get counseling and other treatment.

Nimerfroh steals not because she needs what she takes or intends it for cash, Ramsay said. She comes from a relatively well-to-do family and mainly takes items she does need or particularly want – clothes that don’t fit her or food she would not eat. She does so to a large degree to address the stress she encounters in her life, he said. “It’s about impulse control,” he said.

She told Nagle that her recent offenses came when that stress was lying heavy on her. “I was just so upset,” she said. “I didn’t want to live.”

But she said her imprisonment since October has been very hard on her. “It has been a tough three months,” Nimerfroh said. She said that she intended to enroll in a program designed to help “people like me” that she had found in Reading.

“Hopefully, this is going to fit the bill,” she said.

Nagle said that although he would accept the plea and grant her an immediate parole from prison, he would not be so inclined should she return. “I hope you succeed. But everyone agrees we are at the end of the rope. If you violate this agreement with another retail theft, you are looking at a state sentence.”

In addition to the time she has served in prison, the intensive supervision, and the coming home confinement, Nimerfroh must complete 180 hours of community service.